"Let your moderation be known unto all men" (Philippians 4:5). A faithful yet unique Utah Mormon perspective from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Cain Just Blew the Settlement

We will never know what really happened with the allegations of sexual harassment with soon-to-be toast candidate Herman Cain. (Actually, he never was a serious candidate - just a little better at playing the self-promotion game than the donald or the sarah). I certainly haven't seen the settlement agreement with the female employee either, but I know enough of personnel law to say that Cain has blown it big time.

No doubt the settlement has a confidentiality provision that the parties are not to talk about the settlement or the allegations. That is the condition the woman's attorney is trying to justify getting her out of. It may have been accomplished by Cain's stupidity in saying what he has said so far. By saying that it was a settlement to get rid of a nuisance complaint, he may have broken another likely provision of such a settlement.
No doubt there is some kind of "no fault" clause or something that says that this settlement resolves the dispute without any determination of the relative merits of the positions of the parties. When Cain understandably, and maybe even truthfully, denied he had ever sexually harassed anyone, he defended himself on the merits, and is likely in breach of the settlement.

And, once again, without regard to what the ultimate truth of the matter is, the woman certainly has a different view or at least made such a claim and she has now been called a liar to the entire world through Cain's mismanagement of this situation.

There are stories in my life you will never hear from me on this blog from my government work. Some of them would be from my role as a personal law attorney and even as a manager. I can only say that my experience is such that I have negotiated, drafted and signed several similar settlements on all kinds of disputes in the work place and may or may not even be the subject of some from the period I served as a manager. And I will have to leave it there for now in case I ever want to run for president or maybe even a book tour.

Cain should have been better prepared in his campaign for this - but then it's not a serious campaign. He could have merely acknowledged a dispute that had been resolved and no further comment. This one will get uglier before Cain drops. It's too bad people can't solve their conflicts in life in a better manner. And especially when they do come to resolution, that they can't leave it alone but pick at the wounds and blame all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.

2 comments:

(Anon/M) Call me cynical, but I have found that, in those sexual harassment incidents (specially if there is a settlement)if there is smoke, there is a 99.9999% chance there was fire. Why do politicos even bother to deny anything? They're just digging a pit for themselves, that they will have to climb out of anyway. Of course, Cain is toast. He never was a serious contender. Do the Repubs even have one? Mitt won't do, in the long run.

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